One of the most celebrated and generally recognized moments in the
Dickens canon (if not all of English literature) is the scene in which his former business
partner, Jacob Marley, now seven-years-dead, forces Ebenezer Scrooge to confront his own
deplorable spiritual state. Every major illustrator of A Christmas
Carol, including John [Commentary continued below.]

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Passage Realised

[Scrooge's] colour changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through
the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying
flame leaped up, as though it cried, "I know him; Marley's Ghost!" and fell again.

The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat,
tights and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his
coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle.
It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it
closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel.
His body was transparent, so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his
waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind.

Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never
believed it until now.

No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom through
and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its
death-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head
and chin, which wrapper he had not observed before: he was still incredulous, and fought
against his senses. [Stave One, "Marley's Ghost," p. 14]

Commentary: "Leech Revised"

Leech, Sol Eytinge, E. A. Abbey, Fred Barnard, Harry Furniss, and Arthur
Rackham, has attempted to realise the spectral visitation in Scrooge's sitting-room. An
obvious problem for the illustrator of this scene is the fact that Dickens describes the
ghostly partner's body as "transparent" (14), so that the reader, like Scrooge, should be
able see through the spectre to the buttons on the back his coat, and yet also
be able to see his waistcoat, tights, and Hessian boots, all in the approved Regency
fashion. Working within this limitation, John Leech has provided the standard image of
Scrooge's confrontation with his alter-ego, and has included all the elements of
furniture and costume that Dickens describes. In Leech, Eytinge, Abbey, Barnard, and
Furniss, the spirit, dragging his chains, ledgers, and cashboxes, occupies the right-hand
register, while Scrooge, in nightgown and nightcap, occupies the left-hand register,
before the fireplace. Furniss, then, is yielding to what must have been popular
expectation in realising this scene, but he must also have been aware that his readers
would inevitably compare his treatment with at least Leech's and Barnard's — just as
Arthur Rackham, only five years later, would have expected his readers to have compared
his modelled, colourful version with those of 1843, 1878, and 1910. Whereas Rackham went
out of his way to depart from past practice by reversing the positions of Scrooge and
Marley, and by having Marley to appear to be on fire, Furniss borrowed heavily from
Leech's version, although he minimised the fireplace (left) and gave the table straight
rather than barleycane legs. The salient point of difference, then, is Scrooge's
expression, which is markedly distrustful and suspicious in Furniss's illustration, rather
than amazed or utterly composed.

John Leech in the original edition set the terms of illustration for so many of the
scenes in the novella, including the of Marley's arrival from the depths of Scrooge's
subconscious and the grave, a rendition to which all subsequent illustrators have
respnded. Sol Eytinge, Junior, in his 1867 Diamond Edition of The
Christmas Books and in the twenty-fifth anniversary A Christmas
Carol the following year reacted to Leech's composition by moving in for a closeup,
first with a repentant and terrified Scrooge on his knees in "Scrooge and The Ghost" and subsequently with
"Marley's Ghost", in which his focus is clearly
Scrooge's remorse in the former and terror in the latter, the Ghost being transparent
and seated in both. In contrast, the other illustrators realise the moment when the
Ghost enters the room, when Scrooge is still trying to eat his gruel in front of a cold
fire. As opposed to Eytinge's minimalist treatments and E. A. Abbey's highly atmospheric
and modelled treatment of the two figures in the darkened room, Barnard's is highly
dynamic as the bed-curtains and bell-pull writhe in the presence of the spirit. Viewed
against this pictorial tradition, Furniss's seems very much a return to Leech's
conception.